Life and Ministry in Russia and Beyond

The Road to Primorsk

Yesterday Zhenya Koltakoff and I drove from St. Petersburg north and west to the small town of Primorsk. It’s a pretty drive up the coast of the Gulf of Finland, into Karelia.

This area was a part of Finland until WWII; Koivisto is the Finnish name for the town. We visited a church, built by Finns in 1904, which is now a city meeting hall and has a small museum in one section. The church is a classic Finnish Lutheran church of the era; I really like the architecture.

First, a video of the road we drove (you’ll see the frozen Gulf of Finland at one point), then just a few pics.

3 thoughts on “The Road to Primorsk”

I’m surprised that this church survived the war. The nearby churches in Kuolomenjarvi (Camp Karavella) and Ussikirko (Polyani) did not. The church in Terijoki (Zelenogorsk) survived, but the steeple was torn off and only recently restored. To my knowledge, in all of these places the graveyards were destroyed by the Soviets.

Can you tell me the history of the church in Koivisto? I’d like to do a post on this site about it.